


Secrets Worth Keeping

by seimaisin



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Angst, Drunk Alistair, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 12:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin/pseuds/seimaisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alistair encounters a rage demon in Kirkwall. Written for a prompt from kinlochhold on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secrets Worth Keeping

Kirkwall is a city of demons. Alistair regrets ever setting foot in it, but he’s in no condition to go anywhere else. So, he tries not to leave the Hanged Man if he can help it. It’s not the cleanest place in the world, and occasionally he finds himself spattered with blood not his own, but at least magic and the Fade mostly keep themselves out of the bar.

But sometimes, he can’t help it. His money runs out, and he has to take odd jobs with a local mercenary guild to pay Corff for his room. He may be a drunk, but he can still handle a sword from time to time. 

So it is that Alistair finds himself in the Alienage late one night, accompanied only by two other men whose names he’s already forgotten. A shake-down job, some merchant or another who hasn’t paid the right person for protection. Once upon a time, Alistair would have been outraged. Now, he just wants the coin so he can go back to his drunken haze. He’ll go in, stand and look menacing while one of the other men slaps someone around, and then go home. No big deal.

… or it wouldn’t have been, if the demons hadn’t shown up.

The other men have no idea how to fight demons. They die within minutes. Alistair, though, he’s had experience. Regrettable experience, the kind he drinks to forget. But the memory hasn’t yet been flushed out of his muscles, and he dances with a rage demon until he can feel the sweat pouring down his back. “You,” the demon rumbles, suddenly coming to a stop.

Alistair hesitates. “Me?” They don’t usually talk, in his memory. Only when things are about to get really bad.

“You belong to me. Rage. I can feel it, sweet in your bones.”

“I’m angry. Tell me something I don’t know.” He lunges toward the demon, but it sinks into the ground before he makes contact.

Alistair whirls, but doesn’t quite catch the demon as it rises up behind him. “The prince who never was,” the demon jeers. It gives Alistair pause. How does it know? Demons must talk to each other in the Fade, he supposes. He’s met enough of them over the years, and even with all he killed, one or two must have escaped to gossip with their fellows. “How it burns,” it continues, “that you’re not the one Ferelden sings songs of.”

It isn’t songs Alistair begrudges the surviving Wardens. It’s survival at all. Especially one. “I don’t need songs,” he mutters, and swings his sword, harder and faster than he has yet in this fight.

The demon disappears. It won’t be coming back, he knows that for certain. Alistair looks around the Alienage, at the bodies of his former compatriots. “Is it bad,” he says aloud, “that I’m glad you won’t survive to tell the tale?” That’s all he needs, really; someone blabbing to the local underground that they have the lost bastard prince of Ferelden living under their noses. 

He loots the bodies of the other mercenaries before he leaves. He won’t be getting paid for this job, and he needs the drinking money.


End file.
